Bitter Harvest is a series of 3 programmes that will go out at 8pm to
8.50pm on BBC TWO television on the 16th, 23rd and 30th of June.

New Lords of Creation/Bitter Harvest

1. Out of Eden

This new series tells the inside story of the most controversial technology
in recent years- genetically modified food. The film-makers talked to the
scientists who dream of transforming the world, the industrialists who
believe it will become the richest and most powerful
global business, the activists who fight to stop them, and the farmers
whose fields have turned into battlegrounds.

Out of Eden includes the first revolutionary experiments and bitterly
fought over field trials, the race to produce the world's first GM food,
and the rise of Monsanto - the chemical giant which gambled all to
become the dominating force in biotechnology in the 21st Century.

Researcher Kate Carter
Executive Producer Glynn Jones

2 Bitter Harvest

The second part of the inside story of probably the most powerful technology
ever developed.

Having conquered America the giant biotech companies such as Monsanto
set their sights on Europe. They expected a walk-over, but the arrival
of genetically modified foods became the most controversial issue in living
memory. Ships were intercepted, fields trashed, supermarkets disrupted,
politicians accosted by naked demonstrators, a trade war threatened, and
a giant global corporation was brought to its knees.

Producer Katherine Quarmby
Executive Producer Glynn Jones

3 On the Eight Day

The last part of the series on biotechnology looks to the future. The
first wave of genetically modified foodstuffs caused massive controversy,
but scientists hope that upcoming products such as obesity cures, and healthy
nicotene free cigarettes will win acceptance. Drugs including possible
cures for cancer will be grown in plants. But will we accept their plans
for animals - goats crossed with spiders, chickens and fish with human
genes? Could this be the next battleground?

www.bbc.co.uk/genes
Bitter Harvest tells the inside story of possibly the most powerful
technology every developed - biotechnology - and the revolution it has
wrought on the food industry.

The first programme, Out of Eden looks back to San Francisco in 1972
and the first revolutionary experiments. First hand accounts tell how scientists
dreamt of transforming the words, how industrialists saw the potential
for the richest and most powerful global business, and how activists fought
to stop them. Contributors include Professors James Watson, Stanley Cohen
and Paul Berg, with Jeremy Rifkin and Earle Harbison, ex-Monsanto President.

Frostban, designed to protect fruit from frost, drew the first salvo
from the protest groups. Andy Caffrey's Earth First group succeeded
in trashing the first crop of treated strawberries, but the farmer
and his colleagues simply replanted them. Andy gave voice to public unrest.
"When I first heard that a company in Berkley was planning to release this
bacteria in my community," he says, " I literally felt a knife go into
me. Here once again, for a buck, science, technology and corporations
were going to invade my body with now a new bacteria that hadn't existed
on the planet before. It had already been invaded by smog, by radiation,
by toxic chemicals in my food, and I just wasn't going to take it any more."

Just a decade later, the Flavr Savr tomato went down in history as the
first GM food to enjoy success. But while many farmers welcome help
to produce trouble free crops, opponents argue that biotechnology does
nothing to improve food and nutrition but is a cynical ploy to make money.
The industry has flourished in the States, but will it dominate world agriculture
in the 21st century? The next programme, Seeds of Anger, finds out
what happened when GM grain arrived in Britain.

The background to GM food, the science and the controversy is found
in detail on www.bbc.co.uk/genes, part of BBC Gene Stories.

***

2. Denial Continues over Horizontal Gene Transfer

ISIS Report, 7 June 2002

BBC drama, Fields of Gold, portraying the health risks of GM crops was
subjected to astonishing attack and vilification orchestrated from within
the heart of the scientific establishment. Why? Because it dares mention
the forbidden H word. The drama suggests that antibiotic resistant genes
could jump species from crops to animals and humans, leading to an outbreak
of a "superbug". This is horizontal gene transfer, genes going across species
barriers, a taboo subject among proponents of GM crops. But it does happen,
says Dr. Mae-Wan Ho.

"Horizontal gene transfer" doesn't quite trip off the tongue as easily
as "feeding the world" in the debate on GM crops. But when it comes to
balancing cost versus benefit, the former definitely tips the scale in
potential hazards against any potential benefit that GM crops can offer.
It is not as if people are starving because they haven't got GM crops,
whereas horizontal gene transfer can kill. And there is much more evidence
to suggest that horizontal gene transfer from GM crops can happen than
there is that GM crops can feed the world.

Genetic modification is nothing but assisted horizontal gene transfer.
And it can happen even when not assisted. There is such a lot of selective
citing of negative evidence, even denial and explaining away of positive
findings that some of us have taken the trouble to collect the positive,
incriminating evidence together [1-6].

For example, laboratory experiments have shown that DNA isolated from
a range of GM crops can transfer an antibiotic resistance marker gene to
soil bacteria [7]. In the only field study carried out so far, transgenic
DNA was found to persist in the soil two years after the GM crop has been
harvested. Parts of the transgenic DNA were found in some batch cultures
of bacteria from the soil, even though the actual strain of bacteria cannot
be isolated, which is not surprising, as less than 1% of the bacteria can
be cultured [8]. Microcosm experiments further showed that transgenic DNA
added to soil, was taken up by soil bacteria. Other studies suggest that
gene transfer may occur via GM pollen and dust to bacteria in the mouth
and respiratory tract of animals including human beings [9,10]. These and
other findings have simply been ignored and dismissed by a 'cautious'(!)
interpretation that eschews any and all positive results.

Can animal cells take up transgenic DNA? A research team in the Institute
of Genetics, University of Cologne, Koln, Germany, was the first to draw
attention to the fate of DNA in ingested food. They fed mice DNA, either
from the bacterial virus M13, or the cloned gene for the green fluorescent
protein inserted into a plasmid. They found that large fragments of the
DNA can be traced from the intestinal contents, via the gut wall, the Peyer's
patches and white blood cells, to the spleen and the liver. When fed to
pregnant mice, the DNA passed via the placenta to fetuses and newborn animals.

In a recent experiment [11], the team compared the fate of soybean DNA
from soybean leaves, with transgenic plasmid DNA containing green fluorescent
protein linked to viral promoters from the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV),
the Simian virus (SV40) or Rous Sarcoma virus (RSV). Soybean DNA was tracked
by probing for the presence of the plant-specific, nucleus-encoded ribulose-1,5-biphosphate
carboxylase (Rubisco) gene.

They found that the plant gene, or fragments of it, can be recovered
in the intestine from 2h up to 49 h after feeding, and in the caecum, for
up to 121h after ingestion. Thus, plant-associated naturally fed DNA is
much more stable in the intestinal tract than naked DNA. In a total of
37 soybean leaf-fed mice, the DNA from liver and spleen were investigated
for the presence of Rubisco DNA. The DNA was found in three organs in two
animals.

In experiments where the plasmid containing transgenic GFP- DNA were
fed to mice, however, a much higher proportion of the DNA were present
in liver, spleen, kidney, blood, and in the intestinal wall, just 3 to
8 hr. afterwards. The numbers varied from a low of 3 out of 16 to 5 out
of eight, the total over 8 experiments was 28 out of 87.

The researcher noted that far greater amounts of transgenic DNA were
fed, typically 50 micrograms, equivalent to 1013 copies compared with about
6x108 copies of the Rubisco gene. But then, according to their findings,
plant-associated DNA was much more stable and resistant to breakdown, remaining
in the gut far longer.

When injected into muscle, the green fluorescent protein DNA fragments
can be amplified by PCR for up to 17 months afterwards, and from DNA from
organs remote from the site of injection up to 24h after injection, and
from intestinal contents 6h after injection. This indicates that transgenic
DNA can circulate around the body.

Why didn't they do the obvious experiment, which is to feed transgenic
plant material to the mice and probe for both a plant gene and the transgene?
Perhaps no biotech company will provide the transgenic plant material for
such experiments. In fact, this obvious experiment appears to have been
avoided altogether, so the denial can continue. Absence of evidence is
evidence of absence.

The only comfort one can draw from this latest experiment is that mice
continuously fed daily with the transgenic green fluorescent protein DNA
for 8 generations did not become transgenic, so there is no germline transmission
of DNA from ingested DNA. Your unborn children need not worry, even though
you do.

References marked with * are for sale from ISIS. Enquiries: sam@I-sis.org.uk